Author: kimi

Posted on

The Doctor Will See You—In 3 Months

The health-care reform debate is in full roar with the arrival of Michael Moore’s documentary Sicko, which compares the U.S. system unfavorably with single-payer systems around the world. Critics of the film are quick to trot out a common defense of the American way: For all its problems, they say, U.S. patients at least don’t have to endure the endless waits for medical care endemic to government-run systems.

In reality, both data and anecdotes show that the American people are already waiting as long or longer than patients living with universal health-care systems. read more

Posted on

Stop National ID bill!

The REAL ID provision was built into a must-pass appropriations bill in 2005 to fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Now a provision to make REAL ID permanent has been hidden in an immigration bill making its way through congress.

It is estimated that a national ID program will cost individual Americans 8 billion dollars and state governments as much as 14 billion more. Sixteen states have already voted against supporting a national ID program. Help stop REAL ID from robbing Americans of our freedom and privacy! read more

Posted on

Chilis failed to whet North American appetites.

There is an improperly used word in the well-written and awfully interesting article about chilis at Yale University.

“But trade in spices did not wet the North American palate for hot chili peppers.”

The author obviously meant, “whet the North American palate” – as in, sharpen it. Introducing liquid to a palate [“wetting it”] won’t create a further desire in that palate for a certain food taste.

According to the article, chilis were disseminated from South America and made their way from there around the world to Asia, India and other countries. The capsaicin chilis contain is excellent for treating a variety of physical ills such as swollen feet and varicose veins, and it also creates a sense of well-being in those whom eat it. read more

Posted on

Overzealous correctness?

I feel this is sort of a sad story.

Mr. Stephen Henry was suspended from teaching when he approached one of his middle school students recently and explained to her that the word she was using to describe something she didn’t like to a classmate – “gay” – is just as offensive to some people as the word “nigger” is to Black people.

365gay.com reports, “The student’s mother said she believed Henry was not intending to insult the girl but middle school students are too young for such a discussion.” read more

Posted on

Spice Market, NY. An eating adventure.

The tradition in my family is that Dad takes me and the grandkids out for Father’s Day. We’ve tried to flip this tradition around so we are the ones taking Dad out, but this upset my father so the tradition holds.

Tonight Dad took us to a wonderful restaurant on the corner of 9th Ave and 13th Street, Spice Market. Evocative of leisure service establishments in Asia several decades ago, when space conservation was not a consideration and buildings were envisioned with ease as their foremost design element. read more

Posted on

What gas costs today at service stations near you

Now you can check the price of gas daily at over 90,000 service stations.

. . . prices are provided by OPIS. OPIS is the only comprehensive source of U.S. wholesale and retail petroleum prices, tracking more than 90,000 daily retail gasoline prices, and 70,000 rack and spot prices for heating oil, gasoline, diesel, kerosene, jet fuel, LP-Gas, residual fuel, natural gas and ethanol. More than 100 billion gallons of fuel are purchased annually based on an OPIS Price Index.”

Posted on

A great reason for no TV in the living room

At 6:00 pm Wednesday night, while moms across America were getting dinner ready and hungry kids were watching TV waiting for it to be served, Samantha Ventresca lay in her living room in Lawrence, NJ, pinned underneath her own family’s 27-inch TV.

In a freak accident, apparently, the TV fell on top of 2½-year-old Samantha when she tried to climb onto the table it inhabited. Tonya, her mom, was home but had been attending to Samantha’s sister of 15 months. Tonya immediately dialed 911 and called for the help of a fire-fighter neighbor who was sitting outside on his porch, but Samantha slipped into coma and passed away at 10:30 pm. read more

Posted on

Each citizen should have a right to vote in the US!

Republicans do cherish their little practical jokes – the leaflets in African-American neighborhoods warning that voters must pay outstanding traffic tickets before voting; the calls in Virginia in 2006 from the mythical “Virginia Election Commission” warning voters they would be arrested if they showed up at the polls. The best way to steal an election is the old-fashioned way: control who shows up. It’s widely known that Republicans do better when the turnout is lighter, whiter, older and richer; minorities, young people and the poor are easy game for hoaxes and intimidation . . . read more

Posted on

Pizzas fall from sky for homeless to honor
request of Executed prisoner.

The final meal request of Philip Workman ended up memorializing him in a way he probably never expected to be remembered – as the posthumous provider of pizza meals to thousands of Nashville homeless the day after his death.

Workman was convicted of killing a police officer during the robbery of a Wendy’s restaurant undertaken when he was addicted to drugs . . . and homeless. He asked that his final meal be a vegetarian pizza. Instead of eating it, he wanted the pizza donated to any homeless person located near Riverbend Maximum Security Institution, where he died last Tuesday by state order. read more

Posted on

Gina is changing insurance and employment laws

New Scientist reports that the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act [GINA] won an overwhelming 420 to 3 majority vote in the House of Representatives. It will soon be illegal for an insurance company to charge higher rates to people genetically disposed to certain illnesses, and for applicants to be denied employment based on genetic test results.

That law will come into being as soon as Senator Tom Coburn, Republican of Oklahoma, lifts the hold he has placed on the bill to delay its passage into the legislation archives. read more

Posted on

American Nazis publicly blame Jews for wars and gas hikes

Nazis in downtown Minnesota, publicly blame Jews for the gas hike, the Iraq war and claiming that the Talmud gives permission to Jews to have sex with three year old babies. None of these allegations are true, of course.

Please take a couple of minutes to watch this video, and a couple of more minutes to post a blog or send a letter to your preferred news service/newspaper – voicing your distaste for this message of hate.

The first few seconds of the movie show commentary in Hebrew. Just wait until it ends. read more

Posted on

For some in Japan, a room is their world

An estimated one million Japanese youth suffer

from a problem known in Japan as hikikomori, which translates as “withdrawal” and refers to a person sequestered in his room for six months or longer with no social life beyond his home. (The word is a noun that describes both the problem and the person suffering from it and is also an adjective, like “alcoholic.”) Some hikikomori do occasionally emerge from their rooms for meals with their parents, late-night runs to convenience stores or, in Takeshi’s case, once-a-month trips to buy CD’s. And though female hikikomori exist and may be undercounted, experts estimate that about 80 percent of the hikikomori are male, some as young as 13 or 14 and some who live in their rooms for 15 years or more. read more

Posted on

World Without Oil: the online game

“Play it – before you live it”

There’s a “very real possibility” that someday soon people will wake up worrying how they’ll get to work . . . because the world ran out of oil the night before. If you want to know how you and your neighbors will react, tune into the web. An “interactive month-long alternate reality event” is underway to explore every aspect of how prepared, or unprepared, society is to face a World Without Oil. The event began April 30.

The participation architect for this project is Jane McGonigal, who was named by MIT in the Fall of 2006 as one of the top 35 innovators changing the world through technology. read more